House of Jorob

Tebow, Prayer, and Who Is Listening?

"We should set aside the notion that if we pray, we'll get what we want. That is a false notion of religion."

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/01/09/did-praying-to-john-316-really-help-tim-tebow-win/

 

Phillies Wreckage

Ryan Howard crumpled in the base path, 10 feet up the line.

That image will represent the entire season, in my mind.

Cliff Lee blows  4-0 lead in game 2, and the Cardinals never looked back.

<sigh>

For this, I'm also a hockey fan.

There's always the Flyers.

The Worst Baseball Stat in the World

In baseball, the closer has the toughest job.

The toughest.

And not because of the pressure, either.

Nope.

You come in, game's on the line, you need to get three outs.

You must get three outs.

Without the other team scoring.

Pressure enough, right?

Nope.

Not even close.

In baseball, the closer is also subject to the cruelest stat in sports.

Not a win/loss record.

That's kid's stuff.

Nope.

The closer is the only player in baseball that, upon failure, is publicly criticized by a statistic.

Ballplayers make errors all the time.

But it's an error.

I'm sorry, Coach, I erred. Forgive me.

But nowhere else is one publicly labelled as having blown it.

Yep.

Closers shoulder a stat called Blown Saves.

Botched.

Blown.

You worthless piece of jetsam. You can't even pitch right. I can't believe you blew it.

Called to task by a statistic.

Cold.

No Rachel in the Belmont

Old news by now to track junkies, the announcement by Preakness winner Rachel Alexander's co-owners was released late last week.

Details are here.

Too many races, too little time between them, put her at risk.

I'm disappointed.

But I'd rather see her miss the Stakes this weekend than shorten her career.

The neat thing about this is it sets up Calvin Borel, the jockey who won this year's Kentucky Derby aboard Mine That Bird and rode Rachel Alexander to the winner's circle in the Preakness, to be the first ever jockey to win the three jewels in the Triple Crown on different horses.

SUVs will kill NFL Football

How automakers' pigging out on SUV sales for the last decade could cause the end of professional football as we know it:

After a summer of $4.50 a gallon gasoline wiped out roughly $100 a month in disposable income from every single American who owned a car, the fall months witness unprecedented numbers of new-car buyers staying home.

GM, Chrysler, and Ford collapse.

Bankruptcy or complete wipe-out. For this scenario it doesn' t matter.

All three are heavy, heavy advertisers on NFL football broadcasts.
That money is now gone, leaving huge holes to fill.
The holes don't get filled.
The broadcasting networks, standing on an already shakey pillar of revenue now shot full of holes during their last 8 weeks of the football season, have lost a large chunk of money that is supposed to pay for their NFL broadcasting rights. They can't fulfill their contracts.
The teams share of NFL broadcasting dollars is wiped out, cutting into team money that's supposed to pay player salaries, stadium operating costs, and expenses.

The lower third of the NFL franchises, now starving for money that can not be replaced by 40% increases in ticket prices since at least 30% of their ticket-buying base either worked directly for one of the now defunct automakers or for one of their suppliers and remain out of work, nor by  selling stadium advertising to non-existent auto manufacturers, go up for sale.

Unable to find buyers for a third of their franchises, the NFL is forced to contract for the first time in a bazillion years.

Step Ball

MLB has a great commercial about playing baseball with anything you can get your hands on for gear: folding chairs, milk crates, phone poles for bases, a stick and a ball for the essentials.

But that has nothing on Step Ball.

For one thing, you need at least six people to play streetball--teams of three: Pitcher, fielder, and someone to catch--or else you'll be chasing that ball a long way every time someone whiffs.

Where I grew up, we had a shortage of little kids our age. By the time I was eight, it was clear we existed in the neighborhood as tweeners, as in, "tween the last crop of kids and the next one." There were a bunch of big kids--16, 17, 19 year olds--and a pile of infants--3 months, 1 year, like that--on our block.

And then there was us.

Me, my brother, and Chuck and Jeff.

Four, maybe five years separated us in total. So it was natural we hung around together a lot, like it or not. Once we were allowed outside.

Summertime on a block of row homes, when you can't cross the street, can be brutal.

It was brutal when you could cross the street, for that matter. We couldn't ride our bikes too far away, and the neighbors really threw a fit when you played football across their lawns.

So some time back in the mists of the early 1970's, we invented Step Ball.

You could play it with just two people. Four worked, too.

All you needed was an open space in front of our front steps, and a cooperative neighbor to not park their car directly across the street from those same steps.

That, and a tennis ball.

An older one, preferably. New ones, fresh out of the can, had too much fuzz on them.

What you did was stand on the sidewalk, in front of the steps.

And threw that ball as hard as you could.

Our steps were perfect for this. Four concrete slabs, eight-inch risers, 12-inch treads. And a rounded corner where the tread met the riser.

We didn't know any of those words, of course.

All we knew was that rounded edge was the sweet spot, and if you hit it, that ball was going to soar clear across the street onto the neighbor's front porch.

That being a home run, naturally.

A single was anywhere across the front half of the street. Doubles, the back half. Triples, up on the opposite sidewalk.

Fielder had free run of the entire area--including the home run area, if he could get up the neighbor's lawnslope  to the front of the porch area before the ball came back down.

Which was never.

Foul balls skipped off the front curb of the sidewalk, where you stood to throw in the first place.

The sweet spot had an evil twin, right next to it. Because if you missed that sweet spot, the ball would carom forward, up the steps and into your own lawns, bushes and--god help you if you did this--the roof of the front porch.

The annual rite of Retrieval of Roofed Tennis Balls occurred in September, when Dad would climb onto the porch roof from out the bedroom window and toss them all down.

I remember one particularly rough season when between three of us we managed to roof seven tennis balls.

Before July 4th.

Dad proved himself to be very cool that year.

Two RoRTB's.

One in July, and one in September.

The September one brought back eight tennis balls.

Just could not find that sweet spot.

Spectrum Memories

The Flyers beat the 'Canes at the Spectrum today, the first NHL game in the old Philly hockey palace in over a dozen years, and the last one.

Ever.

The Spectrum is coming down at the end of the season, making way for an entertainment complex.

The Flyers organization put on a heck of a farewell show today.

11 Captains.

Throwback screaming-orange blazers on the broadcasting team, coaches, and management.  Lauren Hart and Kate Smith dueting God Bless America.

And Simone Gagne skating again.

But, unless you've been living west of the Appalachians for the past year, you already knew about the Spectrum coming down.

And about the Last Game. Nothing new there. (Flyers v Phantoms next week doesn't count. Not strictly NHL.) 

From the bowl of memories I have of the Spectrum (and there are plenty--the arena's been around for 41 years, and I'm not yet 50), the ones that kept surfacing during the game were the ones with the kids.

The families had season tickets for the Flyers during the early part of the 90's, way up in the third deck. But before we bought them, and for the years we owned them, the real focus was on the parking lot, after the games.

Back in those days, the Flyers didn't head out after games by secret doors or underground parking lots. They just exited the building, and walked across the lots to their cars/SUVs.

And we were there.

After every game, just to cheer, wave, or if you were really lucky, get an autograph and say a few words. Snap a picture.

Game would be rolling into the third period. Didn't matter what the score was. Pile the kids in, grab any available adult, and onward! Put the game on the car radio to get the score.

We did this every single night.

For years.

Until it faded. Kids got older, tickets got more expensive, life got complicated.

But there are a bunch of us who were actually on first-name basis with our favorite players--they knew us to say hello to. And that always made the kids giggle, when Rick Tocchet or Murray Craven said hi.

I said goodbye to some of that wonderful feeling during the final moments of the game today. The building's going away, taking some of it with it's departure.

But not all of it.

That part I'll carry with me for the rest of my days.

Excuse Me, But Weren't You Throwing with the Other Hand....?

The Phillies are playing the Nationals tonight and Chris Wheeler is commenting on Jamie Moyer's pitching.
"He's developed a sinker," he says. He goes on to say how Moyer has developed the pitch to stay alive on the mound. At 45 years old, the more weapons you bring to the mound, the better.

That got me thinking about weapons. And a switch-hitter came to the plate.

A couple synapses fired, and I thought, "switch-pitcher."

Jill looked at me.

Oops. Talking out loud again.

But the idea stuck. And I went in search of the Ambidextrous Pitcher.

Found one.

Two, actually.

All the rest are in the 19th century.

Greg Harris threw one inning of dual-armed ball during an Expos/Reds game in 1995. There was a debate at the time as to whether or not this was a stunt.

Pat Venditte is the current one. He threw from both sides during a game just last month. Pitching for the Staten Island Yankees (Class A) with two outs in the ninth, he faced a switch hitter, who checked in from the right side of the plate.
Venditte decided to throw right-handed. His glove has two thumbs, making it simple to wear on either hand.
Batter Ralph Henriquez took one look at that, and switched sides of the plate.
Venditte changed his glove to his right hand, now pitching lefty.
Henriquez steps to the right side again.

This went on for a while.

The umpires eventually settled on ending the game of "Switchie" by declaring the batter needed to declare first.

This worked out better than the last time Venditte got stuck in a game of "Switchie." The last time it happened, in April 2007, he was pitching in NCAA Division I ball. And the umpires ruled then that the pitcher had to declare which arm he was throwing with before the first pitch to a batter, and no changing of arm permitted before the at-bat ends.

If Venditte makes it to the majors, MLB has some rules work to do. The Rulebook isn't specific on who declares first, pitcher or batter.

What a disgrace: ABC/ESPN Coverage of the Belmont Stakes

Da'Tara wins the Belmont.

But if you watched the race on ABC/ESPN, you'd be completely without that information.

What you got instead was at least eight uninterrupted television minutes of Big Brown losing. All the interviews went with the loser. All the video went with the loser.

And Da'Tara, the winner? You couldn't even find the horse's name on the screen. And when it showed up, it was underneath Big Brown.

When the cameras finally picked the winning horse up, the winner's circle was pretty empty. The family, the trainer, the track rep. And that was it.  And they were all walking away, the ceremony over.

Some belated yelling in the background, and some last minute circling of Da'Tara as they tried to get an interview set up, was laughable.

The trophy presentation smacked of last-minute makeups.

Truly a disgrace.An insult to the winner.